Everybody Makes Mistakes....

Since moving to Europe, Nate and I have had our fair share of mistakes. We did so many things wrong in the beginning of our stay that it's hard to remember them all, but here are a few...

When I went grocery shopping for the first time, it was overwhelmingly different from the States... they had a ton of weird cheeses (that smelled bad), the milk and eggs were not refrigerated, I couldn't find any pre-packaged meals, and everything was written in German! So I decided to buy what I could find to make sandwiches... bread, fresh mozzarella, salami, lettuce, and tomatoes. When checking out, the woman got to the tomatoes and asked me a question. Of course, I had no idea what she said, but I nodded yes... big mistake. All of sudden, she jumped out of her chair and disappeared for a minute, but it felt like an eternity. There was a huge, long line and everyone was getting mad at me, or so I thought. I think my face was turning as bright red as the tomatoes. The woman came back and showed me the tomato bag with a sticker on it and mumbled something in that weird language, Swiss German. It turns out, I was supposed to weigh it and then put a sticker on it myself! I guess we are spoiled in the States because the cashier weighs it for us...

After that embarrassing moment, I was slowly feeling more comfortable in the grocery store, until one day I brought Nate to the store with me... another big mistake. :) It was a Saturday and the store was super busy. There are no stores open on Sundays, so everybody in town goes on Saturday. Nate and I had a bunch of groceries and went to check out. When it was time to pay, Nate used his fairly new debit card. I didn't bother to bring my wallet because I knew Nate brought his. So, he put in his pin number (a random SIX digit number here in Switz.) and it didn't work. I was thinking.. okay, no problem, just do it again (as the line continues to get longer). Nate entered it the second time and... rejected, again. He looked at me and we had this telepathic moment of fear that we would have to put all these groceries back. Meanwhile, the cashier lady was saying try it one more time... at least I think that's what she said. She could have been saying... 'you Americans are idiots' for all I know! I looked over at Nate and he was thinking so hard, I could practically hear him thinking... and I was praying so hard, he could probably hear me too. As everyone is staring at us in line, Nate entered in his 3rd and final attempt and.... he got it right! Whew! That was a close one and I was very happy that we didn't have to put all those groceries back!

Those episodes happened awhile back, but recently we have made some new mistakes. A couple weeks ago, I was really sick and all I wanted was juice, so my sweet Nate ventured out to the store to buy some. After being gone awhile, he came back with something that looked like juice... it had a picture of all sorts of berries on the front and looked delicioius, but when I took a sip, I immediately wanted to spit it out. It was SYRUP! I think the syrup is supposed to be mixed with soda water and I don't think it contained any real fruit juice. I give him credit for trying, but it did say "sirop" on the front, so I had to give him a hard time about that. :) But I am definitely not perfect.

The other night I made pizza and I usually make the dough from scratch, but this time I was in a hurry, so I grabbed a pre-made dough of which I thought was pizza dough. When I rolled the dough out, it still looked like pizza dough... I proceeded to put on the toppings and popped it in the oven. It looked delicious, but when we took a bite, we both knew something was terribly wrong... it was PIE crust! NOT pizza crust. We ended up scraping off the toppings and tried to make the best of it. Fortunately we made a big salad to go with it!

Sorry we don't have any pictures, but you aren't exactly whipping out the camera at your worst moments. I'm sure we will have other mistakes in the future, so stay tuned... we will be sure to humbly let you know about them. :)